WORK: graffiti

I have contributed text to another Whispers Project mural, which reads: “If only the colors were a little different, this might feel like home.” This Whisper can be seen alongside other mural and graffiti art upon the sides of Little Mountain Gallery in Vancouver, Canada.

The Del Mar is a hotel downtown at 553 Hamilton Street well known for the owner’s stance that the building remain dedicated to providing low-income housing. It is also currently home to the Or Gallery, a foundational artistic institution in Vancouver, and already features a beautiful text piece by artist Kathryn Walter which emblazons the words “Unlimited growth increases the divide” across the building’s face.

The Whispers were designed to reference the scale and style of commercial hand-lettering, but intended to communicate creative content instead of the commercial sales pitch. Enabled by barriers of economy and policy, the medium of advertising appears to have monopolized the realm of large-scale public communication. Despite the term ‘public space’ being commonly accepted as equating a sort of commons of the people, most of the physical property in our city is either privately owned, or highly regulated. While plenty of space has been made available for voices willing to pay (namely advertisers), the simple expression of an individual without economic means is rendered illegal.

There are currently two Whispers, and more are planned. Further information about each mural – as well as a map marking their locations – is available on the Whispers Project website.

Obscured in their isolation the words gain new context from their surroundings and speak for more than a single author. Drawing on the finality of commercial hand-lettering and the immediacy of graffiti, Whispers will develop a language which is driven neither by capital nor dissent, but by the inquisitive exploration of human experience in this urban landscape.

ABOUT:
Lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Primarily interested in the following: a) Visual and textual lines; b) the antiseptic tempered by a quiver of the handmade; and c) the diagrammatic and/or explanatory, especially when cloaked in ostensible self-importance without necessarily being true, serious business. Adherence to stringent procedural methods allows for an iterative exploration of the above concepts ad infinitum [read more].
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